Yeah. People still commit murder even if it's against the law, so let's stop making laws.

Bad analogy.

Let's start here: What caused the financial crisis? What will Glass-Steagall do to address that?

A1: Banks bundling together large quantities of risky mortgages with a few safe mortgages into bond packages. Important to this discussion, these mortgage packages were purchased from public banks by investment banks if the banks themselves did not start trading the bonds in the first place. The safe mortgages would ensure ratings agencies gave the packages high ratings. Because they had high ratings, people and institutions like retirement investors were willing to invest in them.

A2: Glass-Steagall, if it is similar to the original, will prevent the banks from trading in the bond market. It may or may not prevent Wall Street banks from purchasing them from normal banks, as I'm not an expert on the original law nor Warren's revised one.

Additional Comment: "This won't fix everything so fuck it" is incredibly dumb.

"People will break laws so let's not make any laws"* is one of my favorite Republican arguments.


* does not apply to abortions, immigration

Why bother eating healthy when there is so much candy in the world. Mmmmm, mmm deregulation cakes are so delicious.

It's still too easy to get an unsustainable loan, and I'm not even talking about subprime loans, although those are making a comeback now that another housing bubble is starting to form. If this legislation doesn't seriously tighten lending requirements, nothing will change.

This is exactly why I want lawn darts back. There were puncture wounds before they existed and after they were banned. Banning lawn darts solved nothing.

Hooker,
A1: What is a "bond package"? Are you sure you understand how mortgages were securitized and sold? Are you sure you understand what savvy investors (large banks, funds etc.) understood when buying them?

A2: I don't think you understand what the "bond market" is. Banks *need* to trade fixed income, Glass Steagall won't stop them from doing that.

Without understanding exactly what is going on, you are at risk of getting swindled by a popular politician who is saying "Hey! Look over there!".

Lucky for you guys, I stole a TARDIS and fought sixteen extragalactic wars against Xenu, Ming the Merciless, and Rocky Jones to steal the super secret act from the Vaults of Armageddon held in the core of a neutron star by Her Ovimagnate the Reptile Queen of All Space and Time.

By doing a simple search.

This is the 2013 version that pinged no one's radar at all.

http://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/21stCenturyGlassS teagall.pdf

gmol, your opening statement was such a worn out logical fallacy that no one should have responded at all, but since we're talking about it, so be it, what the hell. McCain, Cantwell, and King are the most populist Lefty Nazi Socialist mofos in the Congress, I know, but at least read their bill. Please point out the parts you think they're swindling you about.

You may need this for section 3.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/12/chapter-16

Oh man, I really like the public shaming clause for failure to comply. That part made me laugh.

I can't wait until you guys read it, it's hilarious!

Meme, I'm familiar with the premise of the bill. Such bills are carefully worded documents that invariably make it difficult to understand what is actually going on and even respond to with research. Posting a link to the bill doesn't address what I'm asking, bills are not research documents.

Hooked doesn't appear to know the difference between a bond and an MBS. One should ask themselves if they really have a good guess about what is going on before they get behind someone's mere charisma.

gmol, you're full of shit. If you read the bill you'd see it's logically laid out, straight forward, and written in plain english. It cites the research done that informed the bill, which you could easily look up, and you're obviously not familiar with a goddamned thing.

You can't be this dumb and write complete sentences, so I assume you're being obtuse on purpose.

Pick a dumber audience for this shit next time.

It's 30 fucking pages, people, and it's about the future of the planet's economy. I expect better.

Foolishly, but I do.

Oh wow, the fines are steeper than I anticipated, nice.

Maybe gmol is right, John McCain is starting to woo me with his charisma on this. Tell me more about how much the banks will have to pay, Daddy Mac while I warm the oil.

The bill obviously provides a narrative, but (like all such documents) claims are carefully worded to sponsor a narrative rather than critically examine a claim.

Come back after you've browsedhttp://www.hoover.org/research/across-great-divide-new-pers pectives-financial-crisis-0

and
http://fic.wharton.upenn.edu/fic/papers/10/10-12.PDF

My motivation here is that it is easy to be all "YEAH BANK CDOS BLACSWANED TEH MARKET SUPRIME LOANS THATS THE HOUSE THE BANK TOOK". If you don't know the difference between a bond and MBS, check yourself. Supporting political claptrap won't help you find the solution you are looking for.

I have to agree with gmol. "All The Devils Are Here" is a great read if you want to understand the financial crisis.

Lack of government oversight is a strange cause to blame when you consider how much government was involved in the market. Those very pension funds cited were in many cases REQUIRED to bring in a certain return, yet it was impossible to earn money off of more traditional bonds because of interest rates set by central banks; of course fund managers would go chasing yield in exotic places! People forget that GSEs, like Fanny, were under government mandates to lend to home buyers, or that the government was opposed to banks being prudent when issuing home loans... we called the banks "racist" and forced them to give loans to people whom they otherwise would not have been deemed creditworthy.

Hooker
Yeah. People still commit murder even if it's against the law, so let's stop making laws.

That applies to both your recent posts. Same logical fallacy.

Neither of you read the bill, I take it?

Mortgage-backed securities aren't bonds?

Why don't you explain where we're wrong? As I said, I'm no expert, but at least I've been forthcoming. I'm more than willing to have a civil discussion with you, gmol. I'm interested in the subject and I'd love to learn more. I have a feeling you fronting, though.

MBS s are bonds, (although I don't think of them as such). You use of terms like "bbond package" and claim about bond markets thoroughly confused me as they are not true.

Consider your (common) claim that ratings agencies deliberately misrepresented ratings to contribute to the crisis. Will write more but couldn't let my suggestion stand as it is not valid in this context.

Take a look at the Lang paper (from Wharton).

If ratings were a factor in the crisis, was it because the ratings were calculated improperly by negligence? Or perhaps some an error that would have been difficult to see? Were there malicious errors in calculations? The paragraph begining here starts giving you a feel about the problems with the MBS explanation:

"While it is clear that inflated ratings played a major role in promoting mortgage-related
structured financial products, there are several problems with relying on this as an explanation
for why large firms were so vulnerable to severe negative shocks to the mortgage market."

In the context of this abbreviated discussion, let's assert that it isn't clear that ratings agencies were malicious (or significantly complicit)in their rating methods that resulted in inflated ratings nor is it clear that these inflated ratings were themselves a major factor in the crisis. The key sentence in the paper on this is "pricing of many of these securities indicated that market participants knew that they were riskier
than typical AAA securities". That is the sentence suggests something that many people are aware at all levels of business "everyone that matters knows what is actually going on".

Let's agree that credit rating agencies don't seem to be the root cause and go from there.

I never said the ratings agencies are the root causes, nor did I say they were knowingly doing it. The most popular understanding was that the ratings agencies had no idea what they were doing. Good mortgages were packaged with the doomed ones specifically to fool the ratings agencies, otherwise why bother wasting good investments in those packages? Just make them straight-up timebombs and recover your investment on the mortgages that won't explode as normal.

Clearly, _clearly_, the root cause was banks' willingness to lend money to people they knew couldn't repay them, and they did that because they knew they could sell those packages off, either directly to investors (thus acting simultaneously as an investment bank and a commercial bank, which Glass-Steagall prohibits) or to investment banks (which I'm not sure Glass-Steagall prohibits). Am I wrong about Glass-Steagall's position in this?

Ok so we agree on ratings agencies for the purposes of this conversation.

Now your claim is that it was because *commercial banks* were *willingly* making loans to people who they knew couldn't repay them (emphasis to make sure we are making the correct assignments here). They did this since they could sell them off to other people which included *investment banks* and make money while others held on to something worthless. You seem to suggest risky mortgages were stealthily packaged with good mortgages to confuse the rating agencies. Did the agencies lack transparency as to what the was in these CDOs?

So how did the commercial banks then sell these mortgage products to sophisticated investors? Were they doing something illegal? Willfully? Were the commercial banks not rating and pricing these mortgage products correctly? Were the buyers (like investment banks) unqualified to price these loans?

GlassS (to avoid name collision with the more prominent GS) prevented investment banks from taking loans and prevented commercial banks from dealing/investing in "risky" securities. GlassS did not prevent commercial banks from making loans or from selling them to parties like investment banks. GlassS would not have prevented LEH, BS, MS and CIT et al. from buying mortgage risk. GlassS would not have prevented commercial banks from selling/dealing in mortgage risk.

"GlassS (to avoid name collision with the more prominent GS) prevented investment banks from taking *deposits*" (not loans)

My understanding is that the bad mortgages were packaged with the good ones to ensure triple A ratings and they just didn't make the entire package available to the ratings agencies or pumped up the visibility on the good mortgages because the agencies were understandably not going to do background on all of the thousands of mortgages in it. Once it had a high rating, investors were willing to to buy into them. That's a chain of causation that makes sense to me. You're saying this is incorrect? What's your understanding of what happened?

I'm presuming we agree on GlassS (another, unfortunately, dense link: https://sites.google.com/site/lawyerronalddavidgreenberg/selected- publications/commentary)


You seem to be claiming MBSs were mispriced as a result of incorrect ratings caused by some sort of obfuscation of the mortgage pool. Not clear if you think the ratings provided by the agencies or the originators are the problem here.

The ratings on MBSs were inflated, exactly how/why they were inflated is the crux of the matter.


-Recall this all computerized, there isn't really a barrier to prevent anyone from looking at a spreadsheet of loans and highlighting bad loans in a pool. I think NPR's famous "Giant Pool Of Money" podcast actually had the hosts look up individual loans from the pool and interview the owners.


-Recall there are a number of loan originators that "choked on their own dogfood", hard to believe there was was mathematical trickery involved to ultimately trick oneself into paying too much for risky debt. There is nothing wrong with selling a loan with a high default risk, you just need to price it appropriately.

-Maybe the credit models weren't correct? The tail risk estimates in some cases aren't bad, yet we can show they were simply ignored in some cases.

-Did the inflated ratings contribute to the crisis? Probably, but remember, everyone kind of knows what is going on evidenced by "pricing of many of these securities indicated that market participants knew that they were riskier than typical AAA securities." It isn't like some trader goon on the floor was all like "I had no idea this Gaussian Copula was integrated so poorly!".


Ratings were inflated, probably due to multiple factors (untested models, data bias etc.). The models didn't actually do such a bad job in predicting pessimistic outcomes, but we just didn't bother listening to them. None of this really really matters though, everyone that matters seemed to know what the real deal was; the people that make the big decisions probably couldn't integrate a function if their life depended on it.

BLACK PEOPLE HANDOUTS CONFEDERATE FLAG

Sanders.

We have to just start putting OUR GUYS in. The conservative side doesn't care how fucking evil or stupid their candidate is. They will vote for him as long as he promises to vote against their best interests for the sake of "family".

Get bernie sanders in and watch things ACTUALLY change a little for the better. We all know the problems with him running, but a bad perception from the left didn't stop Bush Sr's retarded fucking kid from becoming president, so let's not worry about the bad perception from the right. At all.

At this point it's pretty well established the right's "perception" means absolutely jack shit to anybody with a grasp on basic nonreligious human morality.

Gmork, you Leftist Nazi Socialist Pig Dog! Why don't you just make white people slaves to Guatamalans and ISIS while you're at it!? Why do you hate America!?

If you vote for anyone besides Hilary, Donald Trump will be president and it will be your fault! We must stand as one people, as one nation, and with one leader! Hail victory!

Replace "sanders" with "obama" in gmork's comment, and that's how I felt all those years ago. My political heart* has been broken.

*My political heart is actually in may ass, so it's not that big a deal.

Asses are just hearts turned upside down.
The making of a smile in every frown.

:)

Fix Congress or you won't see much change, no matter who's in the Oval Office. That means taking back the House, plus taking back the Senate and making sure those Senators are willing to fix the filibuster on day one.

Sanders' strength is income inequality, but he's crazy weak in other areas. He's been Senator to the whitest state in the Union, so he has no idea how to talk race and win over the coalition that put Obama in the White House. What's worse, he treats minority inequality as a consequence of economic inequality in general, without any apparent awareness that racism is the driving force that allows the rich to get away with murder in the first place. Basically, all the Republicans have to do is put a black or Mexican face on any efforts to spread the wealth around, and they've won half the white vote ... and Bernie has no idea how to confront that.

As I like to say, Bernie's analysis of the Trayvon Martin case is probably: "if only I were in charge, Trayvon could have bought twice as many Skittles".

Speaking of guns, Bernie's also much more favorable to the NRA than Hillary -- neither of them gets a high ranking, but Bernie cuts them breaks that Hillary will not. If Hillary is their worst nightmare, Sanders would be at worst an occasional annoyance to the NRA.

But Bernie's biggest vulnerability is his continued endorsement of single payer. Not only does he need a Congress willing to pass it, but did you hear about Vermont's attempt at single payer, Green Mountain? Vermont officially pulled the plug on Green Mountain in December, because they couldn't find a mechanism to fund it that the public would accept. Most presidential candidates run on policies that they were able to successfully implement in their home states; Bernie is running on a policy that Vermont completely crashed and burned on. Even Sarah Palin's retarded kid could take him apart over single payer.

Hilary gives no fucks about income inequality.

But that's irrelevant, because Congress, so what do you think about Grayson stepping up all left of the left in Floridiana?

"Hillary gives no fucks about income inequality."

She probably cares less than Bernie, but she definitely cares more than the Republicans. I realize the easiest way to gain Leftie cred these days is to denounce Hillary -- whoever does it the most vehemently, wins -- but her actual record has her consistently supporting wage increases, sponsoring the Lilly Ledbetter Act, pushing for tax increases on the rich, and the like. She may not be a "burn the rich" type, but neither is she the monster the Left wants her to be.

Bernie wasn't popular enough for Hillary supporters until he was popular, now he's too lamestream for Hillary supporters. Don't do the "we're the majority and you guys are leftie whiners" to the "well, we're now victims of you leftie monsters" tactic. It's not classy. It's a good time to be a Democrat, we have the space to flex our candidates' muscles, whichever one wins. Enjoy it a little. The Republican scarecrow is irrelevant. A houseplant can beat the Republican clown car this election cycle. Comparing her to a Republican is an exercise in evasion. Bernie is her opponent and the only one she has. He is the person she's being compared with. If she doesn't start saying some shit that translates to "I will actively take steps to unfuck you, American people" she will straight up lose. She needs to find a way to paint Bernie as regressive. Good luck there.

Anyway, Grayson! Since Congress is where the action is.

You know who likes Hillary? Minorities, who remember history and will stand in line for hours to vote.

You know who likes Bernie? Entitled white folks, who can't be assed to roll out of bed and vote.

Bernie's going to lose on that alone, so I don't see Bernie as a "threat" or even a person of consequence. Even Bernie admits that he's in the race primarily to keep issues afloat rather than to win.

None of which changes the fact that, for years now, the Left has been getting off on trashing Hillary, facts or information be damned. I have my criticisms of her but at least I try to base them on reality.

Grayson is entertaining, but here's the thing: the more entertainingly blunt a candidate is, the more I suspect they aren't in it to win it. Kind of like Jill Stein: it's easy for her to talk about all the things she would do if she were president, because it ain't never gonna happen, so she can promise as big as she wants.

Normal people want solutions to economic issues that affect their ability to put food on the table, and Sanders talks class without getting bogged down in the sort of overly shrill cultural critique that is killing the American left. That's a strength if winning matters to you. Being the leftist equivalent of the pro-life wing of the Republican party is great way to moralize yourself out of a national election.

Teener, I know how you're feeling with regard to Obama and now Sanders. These guys look like "exactly what we need right now" right up until they get in the office. Then I think they get smothered and squashed by the "handlers" and Congress over "don't do this" "oh you don't want to piss THEM off" "think about re-election with regard to that"...on and on until they just become just another rusty cog in the DC wheel of progress.

>You know who likes Hillary? Minorities, who remember history and will stand in line for hours to vote.

You just admitted she cares less than Bernie about income inequality. Do minorities not care about income inequality, since they are on the bottom of it? Guess not.

>You know who likes Bernie? Entitled white folks, who can't be assed to roll out of bed and vote.

This is just a bullshit statement.

It's obvious you wont be happy until the Democrat party is two million right wing corporatists and you can say "I win" to the people on your side that made you feel bad. To think I was pissed that the dumb shits in the thread above can't be assed to read a piece of legislation.

I bet you didn't read it either, or any piece of legislation, ever.

That's the joke about politics and something the politicians all know : no one cares about this country or its people, they just want the right color blood in their teeth and the right bones crushed beneath their feet.

You're going to fail, and Hillary is done, simply because of narratives like this one. Her defenders are poison, like Trump supporters. You don't want votes, you want enemies.

What sucks is there is shit about Hillary I like, and shit about Bernie I don't like. Good luck having THAT discussion. I'm either with you, or with the terrorists.

You're right, in that I do wish this nation practiced corporatism.

"What sucks is there is shit about Hillary I like, and shit about Bernie I don't like. Good luck having THAT discussion."

Hey, you're the one who started in with the retardo-Left conventional wisdom that "Hilary gives no fucks about income inequality." Drag the conversation down to whatever level you like, I can meet you there, but I'd rather you say smart things instead.

As for how entitled white Lefties are the shittiest demographic on earth, all they have to do is demonstrate otherwise and I will change my opinion. But their entire game these days is to threaten to not vote yet again unless the Democrats meet all their demands.

And if you don't believe in the fucktardery of the entitled Left, I give you the Lefties who were so mad they didn't get a public option, they just let the Republicans waltz into power in 2010. In case people didn't get it the first time, they pulled the same trick again in 2014. Hey guys, since you had been only one Democratic Senator short of a public option, perhaps the non-fucked-up thing might have been to push extra hard to get that extra Senator in office? Rahm was right.

>You're right, in that I do wish this nation practiced corporatism.

You see, that would have cleared a lot up from the get-go. I can now try and understand that head-space. Progress!

>Hey, you're the one who started in with the retardo-Left conventional wisdom that "Hilary gives no fucks about income inequality."

You're the retard that agreed with me!

We have more in common than you think. We're both retarded at the very least.

But really, if you expect socialists to vote for corporatists, you may as well stick to marginalizing them, because they wont. It is fair, under that condition, to consider them either swing voters, triage voters (abstainers) or a new political party hijacking yours (Sanders).

Look on the bright side though, it's voting! Plan B is Communist revolution in America. Muahahahaha...

I still like you though.

Big Money Daddy!

Dear memedumpster:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_corporatism

>And if you don't believe in the fucktardery of the entitled Left, I give you the Lefties who were so mad they didn't get a public option, they just let the Republicans waltz into power in 2010.

And now that I understand you better, and where you're coming from, I can explain this. From the point of view of corporatism, this is a different political party, so are no more obligated to vote Democrat as they are Republican. What failed in 2010 was that corporatist Democrats (henceforth knowingly and willingly called just Democrats) didn't have enough votes to beat the Republicans. Socialist Democrats (henceforth called Commies) have the majority vote right now and have seen the way Congress uses abstaining as a weapon. They're good at it. It's a Revolution party smashing the two big ones together like rocks until they split, fragment, and make room.

It's actually kind of brilliant for Commies.

Good links! Would you be in favor of a coalition government? Where neoliberals (Democrats), social darwinists (Republicans), and dirty fucking commie leftie trash (Socialists) can all be enfranchised? Would that be an improvement over our scorched earth lowest common denominator system where neoliberalism and social darwinism have it all sewn up? How do you see this working in a way that doesn't straight fuck someone?

To be honest, otherwise it looks a lot like bureaucratic tribalism.

I don't see a way to getting to a Swedish or Norwegian model from here, which is why I wouldn't campaign on them.

But only the retardo-Left could take a term that describes what they consider the gold standard of successful governance, and turn it into a pejorative for people they have decided are their enemies (for not being sufficiently like the Scandinavians). Even the Right -- who misuse terms like "communist" all the time -- are at least in the right ballpark when they use big words.

Personally, I would like the social darwinist party to cease to exist, and the neoliberal party to have to go through the Spanish Inquisition to label a price tag on anything, anywhere on Earth. I am not a natural compromiser, but I can understand the need to.

Stanley is going to hunt me down and kill me for posting the shit out of his thread.

I chose those words based on what would sound the most self-deprecating for your amusement, based on the present hyperbole of the political climate. This is poeTV, not C-SPAN.

I could have referred to Democrats as globalists, predator capitalists, or oligarchs as well, while referring to socialists as proles, slaves, serfs, or useless eaters. Republicans I could have called lampreys, trichromos, or aquatic disease.

The mechanic of triage voting is real, however, and, like it or not, Bernie wouldn't be in the race had that not happened. Even if he's playing to lose, his goal is to make Hillary look less like the thing fucking everyone. No one will believe that, but it's there.

Just so you understand, that "corporatism" bit was a gentle prod in your direction, to be smarter than the half-educated Lefties running around out there. Calling the Democrats the "neoliberals" is like saying a car, a woodpecker, and a house are all roughly spheres -- it may be mentally satisfying to reduce them all to the same E-Z-2-understand shape, but mostly it detracts from knowing anything useful about them. Some Democrats are pieces of shit, others are pretty damn exemplary, and there are plenty with mixed records, and even some who (prepare to have your mind blown) may be trying to serve the public but may not agree with you on how best to do so. Distinctions that are all but lost on the worst of the Left.

Some houses are domes, but that's irrelevant.

Let's parse this one statement at a time, so I can attempt to show you your blind spots.

>Just so you understand, that "corporatism" bit was a gentle prod in your direction, to be smarter than the half-educated Lefties running around out there.

I am speaking to you out of the same motivation. You see why we have an empasse? I don't see what you call the far left uneducated lazy ass nonvoters as invalid Democrats. You look at Bernie supporters with actual hatred, I don't see Hillary fans that way.

>Calling the Democrats the "neoliberals" is like saying a car, a woodpecker, and a house are all roughly spheres -- it may be mentally satisfying to reduce them all to the same E-Z-2-understand shape, but mostly it detracts from knowing anything useful about them.

I called them that because you refuse to accept the far left as valid Democrats. This only leaves the neoliberal part of the party for your acceptance. You don't want to accept them as part of the party, but you also refuse to allow me to consider them a different party, leaving the party to be defined without them. This is a contradiction. Are Bernie Sanders types Democrats or not?

> Some Democrats are pieces of shit,

Oh no doubt, whoremongers, cancer wife cheaters, Donald Trump ten years ago, etc...

>others are pretty damn exemplary,

To a degree, but I doubt any are exemplary enough to deserve the word "exemplary." I even think Al Franken is a shitheel at times and he's right up my alley.

>and there are plenty with mixed records,

That's about all of them really. Every Democrat has a record with something in it you'll agree with. Even most Republicans do.

>and even some who (prepare to have your mind blown) may be trying to serve the public but may not agree with you on how best to do so.

I called none of them traitors. I don't even call Republicans that, not seriously anyway. Also, you refuse to see the far left as being in your own just stated category, yet you don't see that? I could have made the exact same statement to you, without changing a word. "Bort, Bernie and his supporters (prepare to have your mind blown) may be trying to serve the public, but may not agree with you on how best to do so."

> Distinctions that are all but lost on the worst of the Left.

Back to square one.


I really do want you to get this. I am of the opinion that no matter which Democrat wins, it's better than Republicans. I... hope not, but I suspect you may not agree with this.

I literally have never seen a Democrat as bad, or worse, than the corresponding Republican in the past 30 years.

My hatred of (many) Bernie supporters ... well, "hatred" is a pretty strong term ... so yeah, "hatred". Not all of them, but certainly a swathe of them. What I hate those supporters for is ostensibly wanting to move the country to the Left, but by their actions serving to move the country to the Right. They have a love of symbolic victories over actual real victories that help people. I can't even accuse them of having good intentions, so much as demands.

One thing I've been seeing among the Bernie cult is the worst possible response to the observation that Bernie is weak on race: blacks should just shut up and put everyone else's needs first. There is also occasionally a reminder that MLK Jr was about judging people by the content of their character, which again puts blacks in the wrong for not moving quietly to the back of the bus while white people get their needs met for once. I was hearing that exact same line of BS 20 years ago, but from Republicans like Newt Gingrich. So besides showing themselves to be the same sort of moderates that MLK Jr actually had the biggest problem with ("sure I want things to improve for blacks, but now's not a convenient time"), they end up shooting their own cause in the foot by not understanding why income inequality is such an easy sell in this country (BECAUSE of the racism).

I honestly believe that many of the people who buy into Bernie Sanders today, will eventually transmogrify into Republican shitheels. The same love of simple answers where you construct a primary-shapes-only model of the world, and if you don't get your own way, fuck the country? A big chunk of the Bernie crowd has that in common with the Teabaggers.

Myself, I subscribe to a much less sexy model: stay informed, push the best candidates during primary season, but then always vote to oust the Republican during the general election. The Teabaggers have been doing something like that, and it's worked wonders for them.

I should add that I don't expect the best candidates in NYC are the same as the best candidates in El Paso, and I try not to judge the one by the standards of the other. Dennis Kucinich was electable in Cleveland; he would probably not be in Richmond. Different constituencies, different standards for electability. However it works, any Democrat in office is better than the Lovecraftian horror he was running against.

You have a point, there are fuckloads of racist ass Democrats and Bernie absolutely caters to them by not being hard on racism. Meanwhile, Hillary not only called the church shooting terrorism, she called out the prison industry and the police for being racist shitstains.

This is important and needs to be pushed hard. Bernie is absolutely regressive in ignoring this. Pressure needs to be put on him to catch up or lose political clout.

This doesn't give Hillary a pass to allow oligarchy, however. We saw how bad it can get when Obama was bought by bankers.

I hope this doesn't come down to "open genocide of black people continues" or "serfdom of all people via oligarchy continues" with these candidates. What a fucking awful choice. I'd choose serfdom.

Honestly, it's probably easier for Bernie to clean up his act (to the extent that it needs to be cleaned up) than for Hillary to. I laid out where I think Bernie's shortcomings are, and I don't think they're insurmountable.

But the people who are saying "if Bernie loses there's no way in hell I'm voting for Hillary" ... ? Chain their ankles to cinder blocks and drop them in the lake. They would rather see this country suffer than do all right under Hillary, and I wouldn't mind returning the favor.

I would allow for the possibility that this is just about differing opinions, except that many of the people who cleave to Bernie are the ones who have created whatever counterfactual narratives allow them to hate the Democrats. The public option is the clearest example of this: to hear them tell it the Democrats never seriously tried to pass it, but in fact the House Democrats succeeded, and the Senate Democrats fell short only because there weren't enough Democrats in the chamber. Try to correct them and they twist the facts even more, so fuck them, their true love is not the truth or even health care, but hating Democrats.

Meme, you pull this same "my primary motivation is hating" in EVERY social issue discussion. You might want to just hand this one to Bort.

I think I'll just wedge in here and add another conversation cause I always wanted to ask Nominal this.

What do you think of confirmation bias and the responsibilities to those in entertainment (i.e. video games, movies, films) as well as the unfortunate push of anyone with a toxic ideal to encourage such opinions whether intentional or not? Because last that was left off you claimed the opposing side was only two possibilities. Either entertainment causes ideations or they do not. Because to me, that is a major oversight that the problem isn't the entertainment creating those ideas in lieu of manifesting out of thin air. The only thing entertainment can actually do is to define those ideas clearer. Entertainment CAN influence others, but the notion that it comes out of no where is pretentious and alarmist.

Bort and I aren't on different sides, dumbass. We're not Republicans. Besides, there are lots of social issues that I think warrant some expressions of hatred. Autotune, for one.

I'll vote for Hillary if she's nominated. By the time it rolls around, I may even vote for her to be nominated. Although..., I do have this vision of Vladimir Putin watching as a presidential aid brings in a house plant to meet him, puts it down, and leaves him to stare at it for three hours knowing that touching it would be immediate nuclear war. That's only if houseplant runs as a Democrat.